Can Innovation Through Business 'Solve' Issues That Legal Repression Can't?

from the making-music-worth-paying-for dept

If you follow music industry news, you probably didn't miss Spotify's launch in the US last week. Prior to this launch, a Swedish music executive was interviewed about what to expect when Spotify launches in the US. One part of the interview stood out in particular:

[Spotify] has eradicated music piracy almost on its own. Sweden was the home of Pirate Bay. They even had their own political party and made the prime minister in national television declare "Off (sic) course the youth shall be able to download music for free".

Three years later, The Pirate Bay is not mentioned by anyone anymore. Spotify is, on the other hand, mentioned by almost everyone - including the old Pirate bay fans.

This did not happen because some new radical law or brutal police force were implemented. Neither because a confused prime minister changed his mind again and embraced the music industry. It all happened simply because the users found a new legal service that they actually thought was much better than the old Piracy one.

What is interesting here is that innovation through business helped reduce 'unauthorized consumption' of music, while many a record label exec prefers to invest in legal changes that have not really made all that much impact so far. Personally, I think the recording industry missed a huge opportunity 10 to 15 years ago. Instead of using the legal system to fight Napster and the wave of peer-to-peer filesharing that followed, innovation through business would probably have been more worthwhile (and a lot less costly). Besides that, legal changes on the scale some of the folks in the recording industry envision would create a market that's even more broken than it already is, preventing other business (like Spotify) from driving innovation and competing in their industry, and would be threatening to civil rights (the rights to free speech and privacy in particular). Enforcing the interests of one group or industry by sacrificing innovation and civil rights surely must be one of the most undesirable things we as a society face today.

Even though Spotify displays a good model for success, it does have its drawbacks. One rights organization highlights an important issue with Spotify: the inability to port data.

Because streaming customers do not own their music, they cannot take it with them. Should they decide to try another service (or if a service goes under), users should be able to easily export titles of songs in playlists they created or a list of favorite music, etc. Users should also be able to choose independent add-ons that make the service more valuable, such as alternative means of organizing their music "collections." Without this kind of functionality, users are going to be disappointed, and we are unlikely to see the real competition that helps drive innovation.

We're only just entering the digital age. Blocking innovation with legislation and lawsuits is a shortsighted approach, especially with innovation proving to solve issues that legal changes can't. If the recording industry doesn't live up to their responsibility to innovate and service their fans, others will.

Doesn't the statement "has eradicated music piracy almost on its own" seem a little bit out there to anyone? Techdirt usually does a good job of jumping on something like that but they seem to have glossed over it on this article.

the copyrighters

im sure these societies who spend so much money on futile legal strategies dont do out of an honest desire to make more money. They do it out of a sense of entitlement so profound that they are willing to self-destruct while brining down their foes, if necessary. It's important to them not to find a way to suit the consumer's needs to get paid for the content. They just want to produce the content and get handed a big check, and then they want to dictate how we should get to consume it. I think they have blinded themselves, otherwise intelligent business-people, to the fact that there was a better way than to retaliate with attacks.

The music industry has done a real good job of shooting themselves in the foot. I wonder if there is anything left of the armpits at this point, having finally replaced the foot as the lowest part.

Wherever you look and listen, this industry and it's pet talking puppets have done it's absolute best to alienate it's customers. Listen to radio once in a while. The playlist is an hourly repeat. Nothing new, not tightly controlled by the majors is ever heard. That avenue for inspiring purchasing by hearing something you haven't heard before is out.

Commercial channels on the net are no better. I can find plenty of places to listen to great music, it's just missing for the majors, unless you go to the right places. If you do that, anything out there that's been made and still available is likely to be found. Even stuff that's out of print and no longer sold. From the 40's on up through modern stuff, things I can't buy in the store are available as an unmet and unserved market.

As long as the market is tougher for finding those rare items and for ease of use, it will have the better model in place. Right now, the majors aren't in that running; at all.

Complete rebuttal to "a Swedish music executive":

On the whole this is disjointed ramble: are you now claiming along with this "executive" that Pirate Bay has gone away, and so too will recording industry efforts to implement draconian controls? That a PAID music system is somehow the answer to "piracy"? When are we going to get "free" music because their "marginal cost" is zero?

I particularly like the touch of specific figures for "percentage proof": but even if "digital sales in Sweden were up 17% last year compared to a mere 3% growth in the US", it's may only a one-year anomaly, and the absolute numbers of the US far exceed those of Sweden.

Re: Re: Complete rebuttal to "a Swedish music executive":

Re: Re: Complete rebuttal to "a Swedish music executive":

He just wants to join the navy Go West and protect the motherland.

See Village People - In The Navy.

Quote:

Go west, life is peaceful there.
Go west, lots of open air.
Go west to begin life new.
Go west, this is what we'll do.
Go west, sun in winter time.
Go west, we will do just fine.
Go wes t where the skies are blue .
Go west, this and more we'll do.

Re: Complete rebuttal to "a Swedish music executive":

Re: Complete rebuttal to "a Swedish music executive":

"are you now claiming along with this "executive" that Pirate Bay has gone away"

The executive says nothing of the sort, and only refers to the Swedish market, not the global market. He's mainly talking about the cultural impact and the local usage of the site, which is interesting as it's the homeland of TPB.

"That a PAID music system is somehow the answer to "piracy"? When are we going to get "free" music because their "marginal cost" is zero?"

People aren't paying for the music, they're paying for a useful, non-infinite, service that happens to include legal music. Therein lies the difference.

"it's may only a one-year anomaly, and the absolute numbers of the US far exceed those of Sweden."

Absolute numbers are irrelevant when looking at the general impact of a service. Also, I'm sure that future figures will be analysed when they're available. The author's only going on data currently available, which is all that he can do.

Re: Re: Complete rebuttal to "a Swedish music executive":

That's dumb, business cannot beat piracy because piracy means everything is free and you can't make money competing with free.

Even if you could make money you couldn't make enough.
Even if you could make enough, it would never be as much as the music industry would get without piracy.

Even if it was as much as the music industry would get without piracy, it will still fail because some people would probably still be getting stuff for free and therefore would be depriving businesses of revenue.
If anyone can still get music illegally for free then piracy wins and the music business can only go bust no matter how much money they make.

Re: Re: Re: Re: Complete rebuttal to "a Swedish music executive":

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Complete rebuttal to "a Swedish music executive":

Yeah, I'm not sure if the AC is serious or just mocking our regular troll. But, if he's serious it's a non-starter anyway. The music industry has been competing with "free" for a long long time and even made it part of their business model. It's called radio.

Radio is paid for of course, by advertisers and they radio stations pay the record companies. So while it is free for the end user, someone is paying and this is the key point for all these copyright enforcement people, there must be someone paying for any listening or viewing.

But that probably is the most bizarre business arrangement in the world, given that we know that being played on the radio boosts sales.
Somehow, the record companies, to give them much credit have managed to convince their primary promotions people to pay them for the privilege of boosting the record companies profits.

It all sounds reasonable enough on the surface.
Radio station makes money by playing record company product which gets them listeners that advertising companies then pay the radio station for access to. Obviously they are benefiting from record company product and should pay them.
But once you look beyond the surface,
we know that record companies benefit from their product being played. We know they benefit so much that on many occasions they were willing to pay radio stations to do so.

In a business as twisted as this, where artists pay the company for every little thing the company does to benefit both the artist and the company, so that even really successful albums might never "make" more than the advance for the band despite making the record company an absolute fortune, vastly outdoing any money the band can be said to have made from their own work and the radio stations don't just provide free advertising for the product but actually pay the companies for promoting their product, how can we expect these guys to be able to act rationally about anything at all.

"Can Innovation Through Business 'Solve' Issues That Legal Repression Can't?"

Yes, what is needed is for one group, or company, or person to buy a single big 4 record label. Cut it down to nothing more than the catalog and an online company. Then undersell the others with 30 cent itune songs, reduced fee's on web broadcasting, etc. Open up the catalog in a smart way. Boom the rest fail because they can not shed the fat quick enough.

Re:

I think there is an error in the article; Spotify will import all the music you already have on your devices. And for premium users, you can sync all your playlists to your phone and listen offline.

Which part is in error? The article notes that you can't port the songs you stream to via Spotify to another service, should a user wish to stop using Spotify or if it goes under. That's entirely unrelated to what you discuss.

The whole thing is incredibly easy to use, and there are numerous people I know who used to pay a monthly fee to one or more of the cyberlockers that have already switched.

I agree that Spotify is easy to use (though I wouldn't say incredibly). It is the best such service I've seen, and I subscribed to the unlimited offering the day it came out. I am quite disappointed to see that it doesn't have the automated playlist/recommendation engine that I remember from the European version of Spotify.

Apparently, once again, the labels wouldn't allow licenses for that, once again bizarrely trying to prevent music discovery.

I'm also a bit surprised at how many songs Spotify *doesn't* seem to have in its index. That part is a little disappointing, but I'm hopeful it will be improved rapidly.

I'm a bit surprised to hear you say that people are switching from cyberlockers to Spotify, as I just don't see how the two are similar in any way.

Re: Re:

Spotify supports sharing playlists, so it can't be too difficult to get the data from these into a readable format. There's a number of websites for sharing spotify playlists, and they do this already.

Re: Re: Re: Re:

First I was afraid
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without you to sell me anything
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Bas, your post contradicts everything that Mike Masnick posts here about the TPB and Sweden. Are you suggesting that (eek!) legal music is in fact the majority of the market now, and that TPB is no longer relevant in it's "home" country?

Are you suggesting that, in the end, it's better for online companies to strike licensing deals, go legit, and actually build valid, functional business models that involve legally obtained and licensed content, rather than just "giving it all away"?

I doubt you will ever get to post again going against the techdirt doctrine like that.

...and yet again. Stupid AC comment, completely missing the core of the site's regular themes as well as the article being responded to, smugly accusing it of something that's never claimed - in this case, that "free" is the only business model that can work. That's never been said, and besides which, Spotify offer a free service - you only need to pay if you want the full service without ads. So, tell me, how does a service that allows free music streaming go against the idea of "free", again?

"Are you suggesting that (eek!) legal music is in fact the majority of the market now, and that TPB is no longer relevant in it's "home" country?"

I believe that if you read the words he wrote, he's saying that a Swedish music executive claimed the latter in the quote provided, while digital sales are increasing in markets where Spotify have a foothold. Anything else you think he's saying is your own assumption.

"I doubt you will ever get to post again going against the techdirt doctrine like that."

Except, he's posting the exact thing Mike often posts. The only people who go against the "doctrine" tend to be pathetic trolls like yourself. If someone can come up with a decent argument that's not full of lies, false assumptions and baseless attacks, maybe that person would be invited to post themselves. Most intelligent people welcome honest debate and intelligent counterpoints. But, I never see anyone like that, just people who attack Mike and/or regular posters as being thieves and pirates, when they do and say nothing of the sort.